How the Other Half Lives
by steph7of7
Summary: He had never been George before; he'd been Fred and George. Maybe Fred and George was the thing broken beyond repair. Maybe George could yet be mended. Yet.
1. Lost

1. Lost

* * *

><p><em>George<em>

George would have liked to think he was more heroic in the face of death than he really was.

In truth, there was nothing about the days immediately following Fred's death that stuck in his mind. He must have existed during those days - people must have offered condolences. George must have cried. There must have been celebrations in the midst of the funerals. So many people had died, and yet You-Know-Who - Voldemort, as everyone was finally free to say - had just met his end. It must have been a relief to be at the end of the reign of terror.

He must have buried Fred.

Yet George remembered none of it. It was almost as if he had to relearn how to do something as basic as form memories.

He had been staying at the Burrow - he'd decided that the flat above Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes was far too empty. But he slowly realized that the Burrow was far too crowded. His mother always wanted to talk about something or other; Ron awkwardly avoided him; his father made him feel like he was under constant silent scrutiny. He never saw Ginny.

As the only two homes he'd ever had were unacceptable, he needed to live someplace new. The only place he could think of was the Leaky Cauldron, so that's where he went. While he was working out the details with Tom the barman, he noticed a calendar on the wall. "Is it really July?" George asked, confused that so much time had passed. It seemed that only a week ago, he was plotting a new segment for Potterwatch with Fred.

Tom glanced at the calendar. "Oh, no, sorry. I forgot to change it yesterday." And he casually flipped the month over to August.

George leaned heavily against the counter. _August_? Fred had been dead almost two _months_.

"How long'll you be wanting this room for?" Tom was asking.

George tried to get his brain working again. "Er - er - indefinitely," he said.

Tom didn't notice the hesitation. "I'll give you a weekly rate. If the rates change, I'll try to give you a week's notice." He was already putting a key on the counter.

George took the key and found his way to the room.

The room suited George's needs perfectly. It was nothing more than a bed and a desk with a mirror above it. The mirror was problematic; it wasn't long before he saw Fred out of the corner of his eye. When he turned to get a better look, Fred looked back at him, surprised and happy for the briefest of moments. As George realized what he was seeing, Fred's face fell.

George tried to cover the mirror with an old baggy jumper, but by the third time he caught a glimpse of Fred's nose or Fred's eye, he gave it up as a bad job. He went straight back downstairs to the bar and asked Tom for an extra blanket, which he used to cover the mirror completely.

* * *

><p><em>Angelina<em>

George settled into a routine: after a small breakfast in his room, he'd leave through the front door of the Leaky Cauldron, wandering the streets of Muggle London until dusk. He could sit on a bench on the edge of a busy square and watch people walk by all day. Nobody ever noticed him, and after a few hours he didn't notice himself, either. It was nice - as if he had always existed on his bench. He had no cares, no obligations. No history. Then he'd go back for dinner at the bar and retire to his room.

One evening, after successfully existing on his bench for another day, he came back to the Leaky Cauldron and found Angelina waiting for him.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey," he replied.

Without another word between them, they sat down at a table and ordered food.

Angelina played with her napkin. George watched her.

A few times, she inhaled as if she were about to speak, but then she'd simply flip the napkin over in her hands and start folding it up another way.

George waited.

Finally, still staring down, she said, "Listen..." But she stopped.

"I'm all ears," George offered.

She looked up at him with one eyebrow raised. She didn't laugh, or even grin, but she did exhale and her shoulders (which had been hunched up) dropped back down to their normal level. "I want to talk to you about the joke shop."

George's stomach sank, but he wasn't sure why.

"I think you should keep it," Angelina said, and plowed on without waiting for a reply. "I don't know if you've considered it - I know you haven't sold it - I've checked - but you'll want it later, even if you don't want it now. You'll need it. It's part of who you are."

He considered her words. He couldn't feel any part of who he was at the moment. But Angelina knew him, and he trusted her.

"You're probably right. But...I can't think about it now." He hoped she understood what he meant, because he couldn't even think about it long enough to explain it.

It appeared that Angelina did understand, which was a relief. "Of course, George. Of course. But at some point, we need to look at this practically. If the shop doesn't make money, then you can't pay the rent and you'll lose it."

She paused, but George didn't have anything to say, so she continued. "If you need my help to run it while you take a break, I will. I'm no good at inventing things, but I'm a fair hand at business. I can run it."

She waited again, but George just stared at the wall behind her.

"I mean, only if you want me to." Pause again. "Please say something, George."

He thought about what she was saying and what she was offering. It seemed that she wanted to attempt the impossible, but who was he to try to stop her? He didn't want to think about any of it. So without any enthusiasm, he said, "Sure. That sounds good."

She frowned slightly, but didn't say anything. Their food arrived and they ate in silence.

When they finished their meal, George suddenly said, "Lina?"

"What?"

"What if the part of me that wanted the joke shop is gone?"

She looked at him hard. "It's not," she finally said. She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. He noticed her eyes were full of tears, which he found odd. He felt nothing.

In short order, Angelina had reopened the doors of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. It wasn't a triumphant return, but the shop did a fair amount of business.

George was surprised that he couldn't stay away for long. He didn't plan for it to happen, but one day he walked in the front doors of the shop. Angelina greeted him curiously, but was pulled away by a customer. Another customer came to the register with a full basket, and eyed George expectantly. George blinked and rang up the purchases. When the customer left, he rested his hands on the counter and studied them until Angelina returned with her customer. Angelina did not act surprised when George rang up those purchases as well. She just nodded at him.

Soon he had a regular schedule - Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays, 3:00 till close. And then he was living in the flat above the shop, because it was cheaper and more convenient on cold rainy nights. He found that living in the flat by himself was fine, as long as he kept all the mirrors covered. As he had to do this anywhere he lived, he found he could manage.

And then it was October, and he and Angelina were full partners in the shop, running it together. He should have been pleased, but he had a strangely hollow feeling. He couldn't tell if it was because he was learning how to get on with his life without his twin, or if it was because nothing he did would ever matter again. He didn't examine it too closely. He was busy; that was enough.

He didn't have any ideas for new inventions. The shop was strictly business as usual.

On the first of November, George and Angelina stayed at the shop after closing to count inventory. They'd been cleared out pretty well for Halloween celebrations and needed to prioritize what to restock first. He was in the front of the store, and she was in the back. He had already found two boxes, stacked high on a shelf, completely full of fake wands. When he found a third hidden under the front display case, he cursed under his breath.

"Lina!" he called. "Please tell me you haven't found any more fake wands. We're completely overstocked."

He heard a muffled reply, then footsteps. "What was that?" she asked.

"I said we have too many fake w-"

He stood up and turned around, and to his surprise, Angelina was right behind him.

George was never one for candlelight or romance, but the sudden sight of Angelina took his breath away. It had been a very long time since he'd properly looked at her. Her hair, which she wore in braids in her younger days, was loose around her face, falling just past her shoulders in perfect silky black cascades. Her black eyes were soft and beautiful as she looked at him expectantly. Her skin was perfect, even though she had a smudge of dust on her forehead. She was statuesque, even as she carried a box of Skiving Snackboxes on her hip.

In short, she was beautiful.

And she wasn't stepping away from George, despite the fact that he was standing entirely too close.

And so they kissed. George couldn't quite believe it, and then he couldn't quite believe that they'd never done it before. The kiss was sweet and tentative - George barely touched one of her elbows and she still held the Snackboxes. They pulled away from the kiss and looked at each other.

Then Angelina broke into a wide grin and theatrically threw the box behind her. Their second kiss was not as tentative.

She spent the night at the shop, but they had to finish their inventory in the morning.

* * *

><p><em>Fred<em>

And so life continued. The joke shop did well enough, even though business was nothing like its booming glory days. Angelina spent most nights with George, but she kept her own flat and spent some nights there.

"I just need a little bit of independence, George. No one should spend twenty-four hours a day together," she said, and laughed as if the notion were comically odd.

George wasn't sure what to make of that. As a general rule, he refrained from thinking at all about his life or his relationships. But there was something about his current arrangement that made him uncomfortable - he just didn't want to put any effort into finding out what it was.

Toward the end of March, George's mum visited and invited George and Angelina to the Burrow in a week's time. "I'll fix dinner and make a cake - we should have fun!" she said.

"Sure, Mum, we'll be there."

"Ginny will be there, too - she'll be on her Easter holiday. And your father, of course. And if you don't mind, I'd like to invite Bill and Fleur, Percy, Ron and Hermione, and Harry."

"Why would I mind? Of course they can be there." The question took him off-guard. The whole family usually got together for any old reason - they'd all just been together for Ron's birthday, after all. Why would his mother suddenly act like George had veto power over the guest list?

His mum looked pleased. "Oh, I'm just being silly, I suppose." She smiled at him, and spent the rest of her visit catching him up on family news.

It wasn't until the worst possible moment that he realized the point of his mum's dinner was to celebrate his birthday.

He should have seen it coming, but he'd been so wrapped up in his new routine - and maybe more than a little bit purposefully ignorant of the passage of time - that he was honestly blindsided after dinner when his mum brought out the cake and set it in front of him. His gut clenched, and he realized he was a year older than Fred would ever be. He cursed his own stupidity, which had led to such a horrible epiphany in a room full of intimate strangers, and at a moment when he was in the spotlight.

So this is why Mum was worried about inviting everyone, he thought. Because this was supposed to be Fred's birthday, too.

He wanted to scream, cry, hit someone, run away. He wanted to die. His whole body seemed to be beating with his heart. He made a decision, though: he would not make a scene.

It was torture. His mum lit the candles and everyone sang "Happy Birthday," ("Happy Birthday Dear Geoooo-ooorge" made a travesty of the song's proper lyrics - he'd never heard it sung this way) and George only shook a little bit as he leaned forward to blow out the candles. He took the piece of cake that was offered to him, held the fork in his hand, and waited for the others to become preoccupied with their own pieces of cake. And then he excused himself to the bathroom.

Once out of sight of the others, he changed course and headed out the door towards the empty field. He sat down in the grass and hugged his knees to his chest.

He didn't cry. He wasn't even sure he was breathing.

Ginny found him like that, a few minutes later, and joined him silently. She sat down next to him and mimicked his pose. They didn't look at each other. She knocked her shoulder into his.

Her gesture reminded him to breathe. Soon afterwards he started crying.

Still, neither he nor Ginny spoke. They were quiet, except for their sniffles.

George had never been so glad to have a sister.

Before he was ready for it, his mum popped her head out the front door. "There you are!" she said. "What are you two doing out here? Come back inside, there's more cake!"

Ginny swallowed and said in a remarkably normal voice, "Sure, Mum. In a minute. We're just in the middle of something here."

"Okay, but don't take too long!" Their mum pulled her head back inside, but left the door open for them.

George took a few deep breaths, wiped his face on his sleeve, and stood up. Ginny did the same. She looked him in the eye for the first time that evening. "Ready?" she asked.

"Yes," he lied. They went back inside and he braved the rest of the party as best he could.

George and Angelina left sooner than his mum would have liked, but much later than he wanted. Angelina noticed his change in mood, but he wished she hadn't.

When they were back in the flat above the shop, she asked, "You okay?"

"Yeah. Fine."

"I know it's hard on you."

He didn't respond.

"So if you want to talk..."

"Lina!" he exploded, but then stopped himself, and began again with forced calm. "Lina. I don't want to talk."

She nodded, but kept on. "It might help you feel better."

"I DON'T - just … drop it."

He walked away and ignored her, hoping she'd take the hint and sleep in her own flat that night. She didn't. She slept next to him, and every time she reached out to touch him, he pulled away.

He didn't want to feel better, but he felt childish admitting it. He didn't want comfort or sympathy. He wanted his twin back. The stupidity and unfairness of the world was all suddenly too much for him.

He didn't speak a word to Angelina the next day. She tried speaking to him a few times, but he only responded with a nod or a grunt or a shrug. They ran the shop as usual, but if he needed something from Angelina, he relayed the message through their assistant.

They didn't have a moment alone together until George locked the front door of the shop as they closed for the night. He turned around and found her blocking his path. Her look was cold as steel.

"I miss him too, you know," she said.

There was something about her tone - like she was reproaching him. Like she understood - when she couldn't, how _could_ she?

And whatever poison had been eating at him started spilling out.

"Is that why you're with me? Because I remind you of him?"

She had no reply to this, so he pressed on.

"Do you miss him less when I'm fucking you? Do you close your eyes and pretend I'm him? Oh - wait - do you leave your eyes open -"

"STOP IT, GEORGE!"

But he was so mad, he was shaking. He stomped around her without touching her and continued back toward the staircase to his flat, but Angelina yelled after him.

"I loved him!" she screamed, and he couldn't stop himself from looking back toward her. "Is it so wrong that I love you, too? I don't confuse you."

She stood where she was, arms down by her sides, hands clenched into fists. Fierce. Challenging him.

And he couldn't stand anything about his current situation. He turned away from her and spoke to the staircase. His voice was deadly calm.

"You know, sometimes you feel like my consolation prize - my twin is dead, but hey, at least I get to fuck his girlfriend. Right now, I'd rather have my twin back."

He heard her gasp, but refused to feel guilty about it. She was the one who had wanted to _talk_, after all. He stormed upstairs, grabbed a coat, and Disapparated. It was amazing he didn't splinch himself, since he had been focused entirely on the leaving, not the arriving. Still, he wasn't surprised when he found himself in the cemetery just outside of Ottery St. Catchpole, in front of Fred's grave.

When George returned to his flat much later that night, he was not surprised to find that Angelina was gone. It felt a bit odd when he noticed that she had cleared her things out of the bathroom, but for the moment he was glad of it. He reasoned that if he felt differently tomorrow, he could deal with it tomorrow.

But Angelina surprised him the next day. She showed up to work and stayed the entire day. She didn't seek George out for conversation, nor did she avoid talking to him when she needed to. Her voice had an odd, forced tone, and she held herself quite rigidly, but it all just confused George.

And she came back the next day, and the day after that. They didn't exchange any words that weren't work-related. After a full week of this, George finally cornered Angelina at the close of another day. "So, you're staying with the shop, then," he said in a would-be casual voice.

She sighed and looked at him. "As long as you don't sack me. I've invested a lot of myself in this shop, George." They stared at each other in silence for a few moments. Then she said, "Well, good night, then," and left.

After she was gone, George took the opportunity to really look at the shop. Now that he was paying attention, he could see what Angelina meant. She had completely reorganized the layout of the store in a way that made everything flow much better. She was in charge of the window displays and those always looked good. Posters, signs, even their advertisements in the Daily Prophet were of Angelina's design. The entire store bore her imprint. The only thing George was in charge of was the production and invention of merchandise - whatever that was worth. For the past several months, George had delegated most of the production out to the assistants, and he hadn't invented a single new product since the previous Easter, when he'd introduced Bunny Bonbons, a seasonally-themed variation on Canary Creams. In fact, merchandise was the only part of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes that remained entirely unchanged for the better part of a year.

The truth was, the shop belonged to Angelina more than it did to him. Fred - well, Fred wouldn't even recognize it.

As the first anniversary of Fred's death approached, the shop got busier and busier. George didn't put together what that was about, until the week before the anniversary, when he was working the register and counting back change to a short, elderly wizard. The man said, "It's hard to believe it's been almost a year since Voldemort fell."

George dropped the knuts he was counting, apologized quickly, and started over. The man didn't seem to notice. "What a year it's been, eh?" he continued. "We are lucky to have lived to see times like these, eh?"

George agreed and hurried to help the next customer, a witch whose arms were full of fireworks.

So the anniversary he was dreading was the same anniversary everyone else was getting ready to celebrate. "Perfect," he said out loud.

By the next day, the shop's shelves looked very picked-over. George was especially upset about this, because Angelina had tried to convince him to increase inventory a week before, but he had nixed the idea. "We'll never sell that much, Angelina! And we don't have room to store all that overstock!" he had argued.

She currently refrained from telling him that she'd told him so. This didn't improve his mood, because he knew she was thinking it.

Desperate to keep anything on the shelves, George marched to the front of the store carrying an old box of Headless Hats. Doing so, he nearly ran into two very young witches, who had parked themselves in front of the fake wands. They were discussing in earnest which would be the best, the one that turned into a rubber chicken, or the one that turned into polka-dotted underpants. George found their debate particularly irksome because these were the only two varieties of fake wands left.

He nearly ran into the girls again on his return to the back of the store. When he tripped over them a third time, he exploded.

"Bloody hell, this is the exact same rubbish that has been on our shelves for the past year! How long is it going to take you two to make one _fucking_ decision?"

One of the girls merely looked frightened, but the other started to cry. The frightened girl grabbed the arm of the crying one and together they ran out of the store.

George stormed off and found Angelina. "Lina, I'm going on a break," he announced.

"Okay."

"Are you okay without me?"

"Sure."

And without looking back, George walked out of the shop. He walked to Gringotts, on a lark, to see how much he could withdraw at once (quite a bit, it turned out), and if he could get his money converted to Muggle money (he could). He walked out of Diagon Alley into Muggle London. He tried hailing a cab (something he'd heard about from a Muggle-born acquaintance, and that he'd always wanted to try), which was surprisingly easy.

The driver asked him where he wanted to go, and George said, "Away. Far away."

The driver took him to the airport.

George understood the theory of airplanes, and he also understood that he had quite a bit of money in his pocket. He strode inside the glass and steel building and, seeing a whole row of counters, he walked up to the nearest one. He asked the woman behind the counter if he could buy a ticket on an airplane. She frowned at him and asked him his destination, which George thought was a stupid question. "Where's the next airplane go?" he asked.

"We have a 2:36 flight to Melbourne, Australia, which has a few seats left."

"Sounds perfect," George said.

As he walked through the airport, he considered that so far today, he had made a little girl cry, walked out on a woman he might really love, and abandoned a business which had been his dream.

When he stepped on the plane, the flight attendant asked him, "How is your day going, sir?"

George barely paused before he smiled politely and said, "I've had worse."

And so, as all of England celebrated the fall of Lord Voldemort, George Weasley climbed Uluru. It was a powerfully magical place that even Muggles could feel, though they couldn't explain it. According to the pamphlet he'd found in Dingo Way (Melbourne's equivalent of Diagon Alley), Uluru was a place where the world of the living and the world of the dead came very close together - almost merged.

George could feel the souls of the dead, but he couldn't feel Fred.

He overheard some American witches talking about a similar place near where they lived, called Shiprock. Not knowing where else to go, George made his way to Sydney and tried to buy an airplane ticket to Shiprock, America. After some confusion (and after consulting several maps), he bought a ticket to Albuquerque, New Mexico. From there it was a short trip to Shiprock, which was smaller but more magically intense than Uluru.

But he still couldn't feel Fred.


	2. Traveling

2. Traveling

* * *

><p><em>Ron<em>

When George was almost out of money, he bought a plane ticket to Glasgow. He didn't go back to London because he wasn't finished running away - he just wanted to run somewhere closer to home. He saw an ad in the Prophet, looking for a flatmate. He found the address and knocked on the door, and realized almost immediately that he had found the perfect place.

The wizard who answered the door was young, with dark circles under his eyes. He squinted at George. "Yeah?" he said.

"I saw you were looking for a fourth person to share your flat?"

The man snorted, then said to someone inside, "Mark, someone's here." He walked away from the door, leaving it open, so George followed.

The flat was a small enough that from where he stood, George could see there was only one bedroom - with bunk beds and a cot. He wondered where a fourth person was supposed to sleep, until he noticed a blanket on the couch. There was a tiny kitchen. He supposed the bathroom was off the bedroom. Everything he could see was messy but didn't smell bad. The dingy white walls were bare, but sported many nail holes. There was only one small window.

Someone - Mark, evidently - stepped forward. He didn't introduce himself, and he didn't ask George's name. He was also young, and had messy hair and tired eyes. "If you want to sleep here, that's fine," the man who was probably named Mark said. "We won't get in your way, and you don't get in ours. If you have food you don't want the others to eat, you better eat it first. If you have liquor you want to drink, you drink it first. You have fags you want to smoke, same rules. Things left behind get shared."

George nodded. "How much is rent?"

"Ten pounds a week."

George frowned. Mark misunderstood and explained, "I want money every week, because most who come through here are strictly transitory. Weekly is best all around."

"No, I was just wondering at the Muggle currency."

Now Mark frowned at him. "If you only have galleons, you can either convert your money to pounds or find somewhere else to stay. We here are pretty well shot of _that_ world."

George agreed completely. "Where would I be sleeping?"

Mark shrugged. "Wherever's open."

He fell into a new pattern, shared by whomever was living in the one-room flat at the time: find some odd job working for Muggles, who were easy to Confund into not looking up employment history or checking references, work for a week or two, earn enough money for rent, then spend the rest (and sometimes more than the rest) on the cheapest Muggle liquor he could find, and drink himself stupid. Sometimes he'd drink alone. Sometimes he'd drink with whatever flatmates were there.

He was never really sure who lived in the flat. The faces changed fairly often, but it seemed like he recognized more than three faces. However, he never slept on the floor, and never noticed anyone else sleeping there, either. He didn't care. He got drunk with whomever was there, and he paid rent to the one he supposed was called Mark.

Despite George's best efforts to hide from everyone he knew before, Ron found him in October. George was working for a shipping company, where his only job was to move boxes from a conveyer belt to a pallet. Someone else would pick up the pallet with a forklift and load it onto a truck.

He'd been at the job for nine days, and the mindless repetition and physical exertion were perfect. He could have used a simple Hover Charm and just pretended to carry the boxes, but then the job would have lost all appeal.

As George picked up another box and turned to carry it to the pallet, he found Ron quite simply standing in his way.

George froze for a moment, caught off-guard. Then he said, "Move, would you?"

"Can we talk?" Ron said, and remained where he was.

George shouldered his way around Ron, bumping into him hard, and dropped his box on the pallet. He called out to the shift supervisor, "I'm taking a quick break. I'll be back in five." Without looking back, he strode across a small open area, then down a short alleyway and around a corner. He leaned against a dirty wall, pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it.

Finally, he glanced back to see if Ron had followed him.

Ron had. He was standing, frozen, hands down at his sides, staring at George.

It occurred to George that this was the first time he'd seen any of his family in months. Well, no wonder Ron was staring. George had grown an unkempt beard and had lost quite a bit of weight. He knew he didn't look good, but he didn't care. He was just pleased that he no longer looked like Fred.

George finally broke the silence. "How'd you find me?"

"Hermione," Ron said automatically, but didn't elaborate.

George took a drag on his cigarette and exhaled. He looked around, then back at Ron. Ron, at least, looked good. He looked more like an adult than ever. George wondered when his annoying kid brother had become a man.

He took another drag on his cigarette and squinted at Ron. "You planning on telling me why you're here?"

Ron blinked, but didn't move otherwise. "I wanted to invite you to my wedding."

George snorted. "No one's stopping you."

"Will you come to my wedding? It's in November.""

"Who are you marrying?"

"Hermione."

"I always thought that girl had more sense."

Ron almost smiled, a little. "I did, too. I was just as surprised as anyone that she said yes. I pushed for a short engagement - I didn't want to give her time to come to her senses."

George considered Ron for a moment. "You're still awfully young. What's Mum think about all this?"

Ron shuffled his feet a bit. "Well, you know. I don't think she likes it much, but she loves Hermione. And I think she needs an excuse to celebrate. You know. After the war."

George looked away and took another drag on his cigarette. "What about Dad?" he finally asked.

"Oh. Well, Dad's all for it. But that might just be because it will be a Muggle ceremony. With a Muggle minister and everything."

George didn't smile, but he did stop scowling. He snuffed the cigarette out on the wall behind him and pushed his weight forward so that he was no longer leaning.

Ron broke the silence for the first time. "So, will you come? I'll send a proper invitation, I just wanted to talk to you first."

But George walked away without replying. Ron didn't follow.

* * *

><p><em>Family<em>

George arrived at the wedding late - but only just after the ceremony had started. He surprised himself by showing up at all - he had started drinking early that afternoon with the intention of forgetting what day it was and where he should be - but after his fifth beer, he changed his mind and changed his clothes and headed for the church.

He sat himself down on the very back pew on Hermione's side. Not that it mattered where he sat - it seemed that everyone in the entire wizarding world had shown up and were sitting on both sides of the church. It occurred to George that both Ron and Hermione were heroes of the Second War - sidekicks of the Chosen One and all that. In fact, Harry Potter, the Chosen One himself, was standing next to Ron. Ginny stood next to Hermione.

They were all so beautiful they were hard to look at. Hermione was radiant. Ron - Ron's expression was unfamiliar. He was serious and reverent and more than a little scared. He didn't take his eyes off Hermione.

As George watched the wedding party, Ginny swept her eyes around the assembly. George could tell when she spotted him, because she froze. She nodded once, and he nodded back. Then she turned to Harry, who seemed to be waiting for the signal. Harry turned to look at George and they, too, shared a nodded greeting.

This was as much family interaction as George could handle, so after the ceremony, he had every intention of leaving. However, Angelina materialized by his side before he could even get out of his pew.

"You smell like the alley behind a bar," she said by way of greeting.

"And you look as lovely as ever," he replied, not missing a beat. And it was true. Her hair was longer, but just as shiny, and fell over her shoulders and down her back in impossibly perfect waves.

"Let's get some food," she said. "You look like you haven't eaten properly in months."

He didn't argue, and she steered him to the reception. They queued up in the receiving line, but before George could think of anything to say, Angelina rounded on him.

"How long do you expect me to run the shop?"

He stuttered, taken aback, but recovered quickly enough to say, "I don't."

She furrowed her brow. "Look, George. At some point, you will pull your head out of your own arse, and when that day comes, you will want this joke shop back. But I feel like my life's been on hold for the past six months, and I can't do this forever."

This baffled George. Of all the reasons Angelina had to be angry with him - there were plenty - he didn't think the joke shop rated. Besides, when he thought of the shop at all, he thought of it as _her_ shop. He said, "I never promised you anything, Lina."

"Oh, I'm well aware of that."

"And I'm not in any position to promise you anything now."

She turned away from him and took a few deep breaths. When she turned back, she fixed him with one of her fierce gazes. She licked her teeth before she spoke again. "Maybe I'm being stupid, George, but I haven't given up on you yet. But I'd be tempted to hit you right now if I didn't mind causing a scene."

"It would be a shame to mar the celebration."

He couldn't resist the joke, but Angelina threw him a dirty look. "Well, _someone_ deserves to be happy, and it's just as well it's Ron and Hermione."

He didn't reply. He just sighed and looked around the room. He saw a lot of familiar faces looking quickly away from him. Like he was a freak. Like he was missing a limb. Or an ear.

Or a twin.

He turned back to Angelina. "What do you think of, when you see them up there?" He indicated Ron and Hermione, warmly greeting everyone in the line.

She thought for a moment before she spoke. "I think of how much they've been through together. And how they've always been crazy about each other, even when they were fighting. Why? What do you think?"

"I think about how complete they are together. And then I wonder who will die first."

Angelina physically stepped away from him, then recovered enough to snap at him. "Damn it, George! What is it you want? Do you want me to be horrified? Or do you want my pity? What? What do you _want_?"

But all the fight had left George. He just said tiredly, "I don't know."

"Well, when you figure it out, let me know." And she stormed away.

He watched her go, somewhat nonplussed. Then the line shuffled forward a bit, and he realized that at least he was free to leave. He turned to achieve this goal, only to see both his parents standing by the only exit, deep in conversation with a couple he recognized as Hermione's parents.

George turned around again and walked over to a group of tables. There were already people sitting about - some of whom George recognized - so he headed toward an area that was empty except for one girl he didn't know. She was roughly his age, and he assumed she was a Muggle. He sat down next to her and said, "Hello, I'm George Weasley."

The girl flashed him a grin. Her teeth were crooked and her eyebrows a bit thick, but she was pretty enough and her eyes twinkled mischievously. "Hello George Weasley. I'm Francine Williams."

"Are you a friend of Hermione's?"

"Cousin, actually. Are you a brother of Ron's?"

"Distant relation." He chanced another glace at the door - his parents were still there. Feeling he might as well settle in, he pulled a flask out of his pocket - an accessory he'd borrowed from one of his newer flatmates - and waggled it in Francine's direction. "Do you mind, Francine?"

She laughed. "Call me Frankie. And here I thought you were going to be a killjoy." She produced her own flask.

George grinned. "Well, Frankie, you can call me George. Here's to the happy couple." They toasted and drank.

That was the start of a very long evening. During the course of the party, several people tried to come talk to George, but he would have none of it. He dismissed Ron in what he considered a firm brotherly fashion. "I'm just here to celebrate your personal happiness, you great ugly prat," he said. "Now go away and be happy."

As Ron walked away, looking for all the world like a kicked puppy, George lifted his flask and said to Frankie, "To the happiness of others." They both drained their flasks, and Frankie gracefully put hers away and lifted two glasses of wine from the tray of a passing waiter. She did it all in one motion, and it was so deft that George doubted the waiter even noticed.

She gave one of the glasses to George and said, "To happy people leaving the rest of us the hell alone."

"Hear, hear," George said, and they drained their wine glasses. They grimaced at the taste, but neither of them was drinking for pleasure.

Later, his mother came to talk to him. George neither spoke nor listened to her. He merely nodded at the times when nodding seemed called for. He never once looked her in the eye.

After his mum walked away, Frankie said to him, "For being such a distant relation, they all seem pretty concerned about you." She tilted her head to the corner behind him, bringing his attention to Ginny, who was staring at him with a frown on her face.

George turned back to Frankie and shrugged. "It's my animal magnetism." He winked and drank from a flute of champagne that was somehow in his hands.

As the evening wore on into night, there was a point when George fell over a chair and found himself staring up at the ceiling. He found this so funny that he couldn't stand up for laughing.

And suddenly he felt strong hands lift him up and guide (drag?) him out of the reception room. Once in the hallway, the hands released him and he leaned (fell?) against the wall. Before he could see who the hands belonged to, he was slapped across the face.

"Get a hold of yourself, George. You are killing your mother."

It was his dad. "Hi Dad! Some party, eh?"

"If you can't behave yourself, then I will ask you to leave."

"Leave him alone, Mister. He's alright." It was Frankie.

"Frankie, when'd you get here? Dad, this is Francine. Call her Frankie."

But Frankie had already pulled one of George's arms around her shoulders and together they were stumbling out of the building.

They made it half a block before George pushed her against a building and kissed her messily with uncoordinated lips and groped her with hands that felt too big. She didn't seem to mind - she ran her hands all over him as if not sure where she wanted to start, and kissed him back just as artlessly.

Her hands had settled on fumbling open his belt buckle when George realized he was not so far gone that he was willing to have sex with a stranger in the middle of the street. He stopped her and asked, "Is there someplace we can go?" He grabbed her arse, kissed her ear, and congratulated himself for his chivalry.

"There's a cheap inn, just up the street."

And so they went. George was not sure he managed to call her "Frankie" all through the night, but he was pretty sure she didn't call him "George" either. He wasn't too fussed.

Nor was he fussed when he woke up alone the next day, lying on dirty sheets in an unfamiliar room that, despite recent activity, still smelled primarily of mildew and cat piss. George got dressed and went back to his flat, where his flatmates didn't even notice he'd been gone. He wondered idly if four people had spent the night there last night.

After he sobered up from the wedding, he got a job washing dishes at a pub. He tried not to think of Angelina. He kept hearing what she'd said to him:

When you figure out what you want, let me know.

The trouble was, he could think of several things he wanted. All of them were impossible.

He spent an entire evening trying to compose a letter to her, explaining this. In the end, he sent her a letter that simply read, "I want things to be the way they were before." He wasn't sure what any of that meant - What "things"? "Before" what? - but it physically pained him to write that one sentence, so he sent it anyway and hoped she understood.

When he got her return owl the next day, he could see that she hadn't been bothered by multiple meanings. Her note said, "We can only go forward. Never back."

He read it while standing in the tiny kitchen in the flat that he shared with an unknown number of people, but that only four people slept in. His flatmates were all wizards and witches who worked for Muggles and used Muggle money. George didn't know any of their names - except maybe Mark - and he didn't know where they came from. But he knew they were like him: they had all found that magic was useless when they really needed it.

George read Angelina's note again. _Only forward. Never back._ In a flash of anger, he cast _Incendio_ on the note. "There. Magic _does_ have its uses," he said savagely to the empty room.

He went to the pub and told the manager he was quitting, and could he have his paycheck, please. He'd been there over a week - a perfectly respectable streak. He collected his money, ordered a whiskey, and settled in for another bender.

* * *

><p><em>Ginny<em>

It was three o'clock in the afternoon of his birthday - he was now two years older than Fred would ever be - when Ginny found him.

George had holed himself in a shabby room in a rundown inn just outside a small village in Wales. He had come to this place specifically to be alone, and of course didn't tell his flatmates where he was going or when he'd be back. He didn't care who took his place while he was away.

It annoyed him to be disturbed by Ginny of all people. But if he was annoyed, she was in a towering rage. He was mellow enough from drinking that he didn't want to feed her fire. She had a nicely-wrapped package in her hands that looked dangerous, the way she wielded it.

"Well?" she demanded.

He had no idea what she meant, but he felt he should respond just the same. So he asked, "How'd you find me?"

"Hermione."

George scowled. "Does that witch have nothing better to do with her time than to track my every movement?"

"If you must know, she found a charm that allows a person to find anyone they share blood with."

"Oh," he said. That was impressive, and also quite detrimental to George's long-term plan of hiding forever.

"George, look at me."

He did, and quickly. He still hoped that, by cooperating, he could keep Ginny's visit short and return to his evening plans.

She looked at him for a moment before she got on with it. "I want you to tell me what you are getting out of living like this." She waved the package around to indicate all the empty bottles.

"A hell of a lot less that I was getting a few moments ago, when I thought I could get away from all you people." As soon as he said it, her eyes flashed, and he remembered that he was trying not to provoke her.

"'You people,' as in 'those of us who love you'?"

He didn't say anything this time, hoping silence would appease her, but it didn't work.

"George Weasley, you are being selfish and stupid and a coward." She jabbed the package emphatically. "I can't believe you were Sorted into Gryffindor."

Somehow, this hit a nerve that George didn't even know was there. He hesitated, and when he spoke his voice was absolutely flat. "I wasn't," he said. "Not really. Fred got Sorted first into Gryffindor, and then the hat wanted to put me in Ravenclaw. But I begged it to put me into Gryffindor, too. So you see, Fred was the brave one."

She gave him a hard look, and he quickly dropped his gaze to her feet, just in case there was any pity in her eyes. Finally she said, "That's exactly how Harry ended up in Gryffindor."

"What, he couldn't bear to be without Fred, either?"

"No, you prat. He begged the hat to reconsider its first choice."

George had a hard time believing that. Harry was one of the truest, bravest people he knew. "Hufflepuff?" he guessed.

"No. Slytherin."

George started to snicker, but Ginny didn't crack a smile. The problem with Ginny was that he could never tell if she was having him on. It was a bad personality trait in a little sister - it gave her the upper hand.

But still - Harry? Harry _Potter_? Slytherin?

Ginny interrupted his thoughts by tossing the package at his feet. "I'm coming back tomorrow," she announced. "Be sober." She looked at him for another moment, then left the room so quickly that she might have Disapparated.

George sighed and stared at the package on the floor. His thoughts were jumbled, and for the first time in a long time, this bothered him. He wanted to think clearly.

"Well, happy birthday to me, anyway," he said, and reached down to unwrap the package.

It was full of chocolate.

He didn't drink anything else that day. He went on a long walk in the late afternoon and went to bed early, but he didn't sleep well.

By the time Ginny showed up the next day, George was feeling sick, grumpy, and ready for a fight. At the time, he thought that it served Ginny right that he was so surly. Later on, he realized that she was probably counting on it, as surly was easier to deal with than morose.

"Are you ready to tell me why you're hiding from everyone?" she asked.

"I don't owe you an explanation, _Ginevra_."

"That's true enough. But if you don't tell me, I'll start guessing."

"Oh, I'm sure it all has to do with me be all broken up about Fred. That's very insightful, little sis, but you can save your breath."

"This has nothing to do with _Fred_. It has to do with _you_. You're the one who has to live even though you probably wish you were dead. So I think you hide from everyone because it's easier to pretend that you _did_ die, if you leave your old life behind."

The way she said it made George's throat hurt, but he was still more angry than anything. So he responded with sarcasm. "So you know the heart of all my problems. Do you know a solution, too? Because if not, you've got a very limited skill, there."

"There _is_ no solution - don't you get that? You either move on with it or you don't. And, God, I wish I could help you George, but I can't."

Some of the fire left him, and he stayed silent for a while. Finally, he said, "I was okay there for a few months. I don't know what went wrong. I just...couldn't. Anymore."

She shook her head. "You weren't okay, George." Her words were fierce, but her voice was shaking. "You were numb. Believe me, feeling the way you do now is better than feeling nothing at all."

He snorted. "So I am improving, then."

She shrugged sadly.

He got quiet again, then said, "Ginny, I won't ever - I don't think I'm ever going to get over this."

"Do you honestly want to?" He was baffled, and must have looked it, because she continued, "No - really think about it. Do you really want to reach a point when Fred means so little to you that you don't even care he's dead?"

He understood her point, but he couldn't agree with her. "Maybe I won't get over it, but what if I can't get _past_ it?" And a sob escaped him, and then another.

When Ginny spoke, he realized she was crying too. "I just - I want my brother back," she said in a broken voice.

"Me too," he choked out.

She punched him weakly. "I was talking about _you_, you great prat."

He shook his head. "Ginny … I -"

But she suddenly collected herself, and spoke briskly in a voice that barely shook. "You need to write Angelina. She wants to sell the shop, but I think the only reason she hasn't is because she doesn't know how to tell you."

"Gin, I … I wouldn't know what to say to her."

Ginny studied him for a long moment. "Do you know where Mum's clock says you are right now?" she asked.

George didn't know what his mum's clock had to do with anything, but Ginny's question made him think. The clock had separate hands for each family member, and each hand pointed to the owner's current location. He hadn't looked at the clock in a long time - was Fred's hand gone? It must be. As for his own hand, "Mortal Peril" seemed appropriate, if a little extreme.

"I don't know," he said. "'Lost' maybe?"

"No. You were 'Lost' all last year. The day you ran away, your hand changed to 'Traveling.' You've been there ever since."

"Traveling?" He almost laughed.

"Yes. Dad says it's a good sign - says that you know your way back home, just that you're not sure you're ready to come back."

"Oh," he said.

"I hope you find your home soon, George. You've been traveling a long time."

She kissed his cheek and left.


	3. Work

3. Work

_The Landlady_

When George woke the next morning, he had a goal. He wanted to write Angelina, but he needed to make himself presentable first. So he needed to make a permanent break with the flat in Glasgow. So he needed money. So he needed a job.

By the end of the day, he'd joined the custodial staff of a primary school (he'd really gotten quite good at Confundus Charms), and within a week he found a room being let by an elderly witch by the name of Mrs. Stone, who seemed very pleased to have found "such a nice young man" to let her room to. She even said she was happy to cook for him, and proved her intention on George's first evening at her residence. She made a wonderful dinner of roast beef with potatoes and carrots. George didn't Confund her, and he hoped she hadn't Confunded him because she really did seem too good to be true.

On the first night he spent in Mrs. Stone's sparse spare bedroom, George composed another note to Angelina. This one didn't take as long as his first note, but it did take a while, especially considering that when he finished, it was only four words long: "I want you back." He didn't mention the shop or what Ginny had said or any of that, because none of that seemed important, comparatively.

The next morning he went to the post office and sent his note with a screech owl. He found - to his surprise - that he was nervous for Angelina's answer. He wondered how long it would take for her to write back. He wondered if she'd be angry - if he'd been too presumptuous. He wondered if she would be overjoyed and ready for him to come back immediately. This thought terrified him; he wasn't ready yet - if he went back now, he knew it wouldn't work. His newfound goal was barely a week old, after all. He just wanted to let her know that he _had_ a goal, not that he could achieve it any time soon.

When he came home from work two days later, Mrs. Stone knocked on the door to his room. She handed him a short note, which had a broken seal.

"Is this for you, George?"

He saw the note was from Angelina, with no signature and no salutation. It read, "You don't deserve me yet." George couldn't help his grin when he replied to Mrs. Stone.

"Yes, it's for me."

"Oh, I'm so sorry I opened it, and then I almost threw it away until I thought it might be for you."

He assured her that it was okay, but she was still apologetic. "You can borrow my owl any time you like - her name is Pearl - she's just a barn owl, but she has good enough sense to deliver your messages directly to you, unlike some of those post owls."

"Oh, Mrs. Stone, that's very kind, but I couldn't put you out."

"Nonsense. Besides, Pearl needs more work. She tends to get bored. I don't do as much correspondence as I used to."

George thanked her before she excused herself. He read Angelina's note again, and grinned. He didn't deserve her … "yet," she'd said. "Yet" was a hopeful word. It implied a future.

Yet.

Yet "yet" implied a past. He had not _yet_ pulled himself together. "Yet" sounded like a promise he wasn't sure he could keep.

He scribbled a reply to Angelina which said, "I am broken." He wasn't sure if it was an apology, an explanation, or an excuse. Maybe it was a warning. Whatever it was, it was true, and even though she probably already knew it, he needed to tell her just the same.

He sent the note using Pearl, who returned early the next morning with Angelina's reply: "You are George."

When he read it, it sounded like a benediction. It suddenly seemed that Angelina understood him better than he understood himself. He had never been George before; he'd been Fred and George. Maybe _Fred and George_ was the thing broken beyond repair. Maybe George could yet be mended.

_Yet_.

The first time he paid rent to Mrs. Stone, he paid in galleons, but it was a hassle having to exchange the money he earned from the Muggle school. He asked if he could pay her in pounds. She agreed quickly, but at dinner that night, she was unusually quiet. When he looked up to see what stopped her usual chatter, he found her studying him.

Still, she didn't press, and that was fine with George.

Ginny wrote to him one day. The owl arrived at breakfast - a big tawny - and George opened the note while Mrs. Stone looked at the unfamiliar owl curiously. The note read: "Were you ever going to let me know how you're doing?" George smiled to himself, but Mrs. Stone interrupted his thoughts.

"You have two different girls writing to you," she said.

George stared at her.

"That's definitely not the same handwriting as your usual correspondent, but it's clearly another young girl."

George looked at the note again, trying to take the handwriting apart from the words. He saw that Mrs. Stone was right, of course.

Mrs. Stone continued, "I hope you're not stringing these poor young ladies along."

George snorted. "No! No. This is from my sister."

Mrs. Stone nodded, satisfied. "Good. And the other young lady?"

"She's … not my sister."

"I see," she said, and smiled.

George should have been angry, or at least a little upset, to have to explain himself. But he found it nice to have someone watching out for him. Especially when that someone cooked most of his meals for him.

He wrote a reply to Ginny. It was the longest letter he'd written in a while: "My standard of living has improved. You'll be happy to know that I've been at my current job for five weeks. Seeing as how that's a record, I think I'll celebrate with a bottle of whiskey."

Ginny wrote back: "I see you haven't got back your sense of humor. Pity." George laughed out loud.

That weekend, he helped Mrs. Stone in her gardens. She had an impressive flower bed, a nice herb garden, and a modest vegetable patch. The vegetable patch was only producing peas this early in the season, but the peas were delicious. George helped pull weeds and planted some herbs and tomatoes. He talked about the garden at the Burrow, and how bad the gnome infestation was.

Being outside was wonderful. He loved the feeling of working his hands in the dirt.

That night at dinner, Mrs. Stone kept wincing and rubbing her shoulder. "Are you okay?" George asked.

"Oh, I'm just getting a little old to be working in the garden for hours at a time," she said, and forced a small smile. "And here I am, out of pain relief potion. I'll buy some more tomorrow."

"I could brew you some tonight, if you've got powdered ginger root."

She looked at him with disbelief. "Young man, what do you know about brewing potions?"

He shrugged. "It was a hobby of mine, once upon a time. I also make an amazing bruise salve, if you ever have need of it." He grinned. "So, do you have the ginger root?"

"I do, as a matter of fact."

"Okay, I need to get some things out of your garden, but I can have the potion ready in an hour." He stood to leave, then stopped in the doorway and turned to look at her. "Right? You don't mind a home-brewed potion?"

"Of course not, George!"

"It's my own recipe, but I've used it myself loads, so you can trust it. And I'll have to borrow your kitchen. And a brass cauldron if you have it, but pewter will do if that's all you've got." He turned around and started towards the garden, but before he reached the back door, he stopped himself and went back to the kitchen. He didn't know why he was so self-conscious all of a sudden, but he had to be absolutely sure that Mrs. Stone was absolutely sure. He found her pulling a small brass cauldron out of her cupboard.

"Is it okay?" he asked. "If I borrow your kitchen and your cauldron, I mean?"

Mrs. Stone actually smirked at him. "George, if my shoulder has to ache for another moment because of your dilly-dallying, I'm going to double your rent this month."

He nodded solemnly and went to pick mint leaves from the garden.

* * *

><p><em>Snape<em>

Potions was always George's favorite class.

It probably would have surprised Fred and George's classmates to find out how ruthlessly pragmatic they were when it came to school. They had studied Zonko's products for years; they'd stripped several of the more simple objects (like the Ever-Bouncy Ball) of their charms, and separated the basic potions (like the color-changing ink) into their component parts - all in an effort to see if they could replicate them. Through trial and error, and much supplemental reading in the library, they decided that in order to start their own business, they needed Herbology, Charms, Transfiguration, and Potions.

They deviated from their plan slightly, when Professor Lupin took over Defense Against the Dark Arts their fifth year. They always thought Defense was important for its own sake, but they hadn't considered taking the class after O.W.L. year - even after they considered every whisper their parents didn't think was overheard about You-Know-Who's possible return to power. The parade of worthless teachers made the subject a joke, and Ron told them that even Harry Potter didn't learn anything useful in the class.

And, of course, Defense Against the Dark Arts wouldn't help them with their shop.

But when Professor Lupin took over, they learned quite a bit from him. They enjoyed the class for the first time, and realized that if they got lucky with good professors, then Defense was highly worthwhile. However, when they asked Professor Lupin about the possibility of future studies in Defense, he admitted that Hogwarts did not require a passing grade on the Defense O.W.L. to continue to N.E.W.T. level. ("It's a sad commentary on the lackluster nature of your instruction," Lupin had said. "But at least the Headmaster understands how important the subject is, and allows anyone who wishes to do so to continue studying it.")

So, they decided that Fred would take Charms and Transfiguration, and George would take Potions and Herbology, and both of them would take Defense. Fred liked Charms; George liked Potions. Transfiguration and Herbology split naturally.

It fell to each of them to pass their respective O.W.L.s with the required grade. George had the harder time of it, needing an Outstanding in Potions, but he didn't mind.

George even liked Snape. Fred hated him; he said that Snape was nothing more than a vindictive old bastard. George joked that Snape was like Fred, if Fred were having a good day. ("He makes little kids _cry_!" Fred had argued, back in their first year. "You made Edgar Jenkins cry when you put the jalapeno-flavored jellybean in his sandwich," George retorted. "Edgar Jenkins is _my age_," Fred insisted.)

This didn't mean that George excelled in Snape's class; in fact, he failed spectacularly and regularly. When Snape set the class a potion, George was curious to see how far he could push the ingredients or the instructions and achieve the same (or similar) results. He usually made very poor marks, and occasionally made explosive potions, but always learned a great deal.

Still, an Outstanding on an O.W.L. was a tall order, and it took quite a bit of studying. He had never been prouder than when he got his results, so it surprised him when his mother was so upset. ("Only two O.W.L.s each?!" she'd yelled. "Both of you put together aren't nearly as good as any one of your brothers!" - the rant was the first time his mother had really hurt his feelings. He and Fred had achieved what they _needed_, after all.)

When they went back to Hogwarts at the beginning of their sixth year, Professor Snape pulled George aside after the Welcoming Feast. "Weasley!" he'd demanded. "What's this rubbish?" And the professor waved a copy of his O.W.L. results under George's nose.

"My O.W.L. results, sir?"

"I know that, Weasley, but an Outstanding? What have you been doing in my class these last five years?"

"Learning?"

Snape actually rolled his eyes. "I expect less explosive results from you in my N.E.W.T. class. And five points from Gryffindor."

"Why?" George asked indignantly. Snape should have been pleased with him, after all.

But Snape glared at him for a full ten seconds. "Five more points. For even asking me that question," he finally growled.

George grinned. "I'm genuinely sorry I ruined your day by making an Outstanding on my O.W.L., professor. In the future, I'll do my best to live down to your expectations."

Snape snorted and walked away.

In truth, George couldn't help needling Snape - as, he suspected, Snape couldn't help needling him. Their relationship was never destined for amicability, but George thought they shared a grudging respect. Still, Snape never once awarded points to George. The closest he ever came was during sixth year, when Snape taught Kronecker's Rule: "Potions can alter all perceptions but taste."

"This is why most medicinal potions taste bad," Snape explained to the class. "There's no way to alter a human's perception of taste. Your eyes can be fooled, as can your ears, but never your tongue."

Everyone else in the class nodded, but George raised his hand. "Sir, I can brew a potion that tastes like something else."

"Of course you can, Weasley, but that's called _cooking_, not _brewing_. A potion designed to do something _other_ than taste has an innate flavor that cannot be masked by any means. Five points from Gryffindor."

George thought about this the rest of class, and stayed behind after the bell to talk to Snape about it. "Sir, I'm _sure_ I can brew a potion that changes the taste of everything you eat or drink afterward."

"Then I hope you're equally sure you can brew an antidote."

"No, what I'm thinking of only works for ten minutes."

Snape scowled at him until George spoke again. "So, can I borrow some things from your stores and show you?"

"Weasley, it's impossible and I'll not allow it." Snape snapped. "Twenty points from Gryffindor for whatever havoc you're going to wreak trying to prove me wrong." Snape frowned deeply and continued, "The classroom stores will remain warded as usual, but I know you can get around that. A further ten points for every ingredient you steal from there. Also, I reserve the right to assign detentions after the fact."

George grinned hugely and made to leave the classroom, but Snape called after him. George stopped and turned. The professor looked at him levelly and asked, "You haven't found how to break into my personal stores, have you?"

George looked him in the eye and gave his best devilish grin. "Oh, I won't be needing anything from your personal stores _this_ time, sir," he said.

But Snape looked relieved, as if he knew that George had never yet managed to break into that particular cupboard.

The potion itself was simple, if an odd combination of ingredients. George had invented it the previous summer while trying to perfect the ton-tongue toffees. The original idea for the toffees was to make one's whole head swell, but the potion George invented to achieve that result had tasted so foul that nothing could mask it. The closest he had come was to make a separate potion that made everything taste like peppermint. The first potion couldn't be mixed with the second potion, and the feasibility of trying to sneak someone two separate potions within ten minutes of each other was not promising.

However, he and Fred had some laughs in their room, with their enormous heads, daring each other to eat things like pocket lint, because even that was tasty. "Peppermint pocket-lint," Fred said, rubbing his overlarge chin with his normal-sized hand and looking comically thoughtful. "We could market this!" Ten minutes in, they found the hard limit on the peppermint flavor, as George was licking the windowsill and Fred was eating one of his own boogers.

So on the day that Snape had taught Kronecker's Rule (That Was Made To Be Broken), George let himself into the Potions classroom at one o'clock in the afternoon - when he knew it was empty - stole lacewing flies and mushroom spores from the classroom stores, and brewed his potion. The last ingredient was a tablespoon of black pepper, which he had already procured from the kitchens. The whole process took him fifteen minutes. He bottled the potion, cleaned up his work area, and went back down to the kitchens to ask the house-elves for a favor.

At dinner in the Great Hall that night, George carefully propped up a mirror on a bowl of peas so he could spy on the staff table. He watched as Snape sat down and drank his pumpkin juice. That was good - the potion itself was flavorless. Snape would never know what hit him.

Then Snape took a bite of mashed potatoes and frowned deeply. George couldn't help laughing, even as Snape turned to McGonagall beside him and asked her a question. She shook her head, and Snape took a bite of carrots and frowned again.

Suddenly Snape's head snapped up, and he glared around the Great Hall until he found George. George smiled hugely and gave up looking in the mirror. He turned and met eyes with Snape. The professor strode over to him and said, "Did you say ten minutes?"

"Yes sir, and I'd advise you to not have anything in your mouth at the time. The sensation is odd."

"Is the potion in all of my food?"

"No sir, just the pumpkin juice."

"But the pumpkin juice tasted normal."

"I imagine if you tried it now, it would taste like peppermint." George considered. "Although it would still taste like pumpkin juice to me."

Snape scowled, which seemed to be his only expression. He grabbed a dinner roll off the Gryffindor table and took a cautious bite. "This is … I want your brewing notes on this, Mr. Weasley." Snape looked at him for a moment. "If you were the type, I'd advise you to write this up for publication in an academic journal. But I suspect you have less useful things to do with your time."

"Too right, sir."

Snape harrumphed and started to walk away. He got two steps before he stopped. "As I have found nothing out of place in my classroom, I retract my earlier deductions from Gryffindor. However, one point from Gryffindor, for your lack of academic aspirations."

George nodded gravely, and turned to see Fred staring at him. "What was that?" Fred asked.

"That was Snape, taking one point from Gryffindor for an inspired prank I played on him."

"Cheers, I guess," Fred said.

"Cheers," George agreed.

"He's still a right bastard."

"As are you - _still_ - on your good days."

Of course, after Snape apparently murdered Dumbledore in cold blood, George's opinion of the man slipped a bit. It was hard to put up with Fred's "I told you so"'s, but at least that was expected. What George didn't expect was little pangs of guilt he got when trying to brew a new potion. He would constantly remember something Snape had said in passing about the benefits of stirring clockwise when the moon was waning, or the look on Snape's face when George told him he'd combined unicorn hair with bubotuber pus.

These little things tainted every potion he made, almost as if Potions were Dark Arts, now.

When Voldemort had been defeated and Snape's real story came out, George had a selfish moment when he realized he could enjoy brewing potions again. Relieved and vindicated, he turned to seek out Fred to dish out a little "I told you so" of his own. It was his first reminder of the cruel new solitary life he led.

He hadn't brewed a potion since.

So now he found himself in Mrs. Stone's kitchen, brewing a very simple pain-relief potion that he'd invented several years before out of sheer necessity. He added two mint leaves, and remembered when Snape had said that mint could be a stimulant or a sedative, depending on what it was used in conjunction with. He added a dash of powdered ginger root and stirred three times counterclockwise, remembering that the moon was waxing. He remembered the first time he'd brewed this, when Fred laughed at him, or tried to, but winced after every chuckle. (They'd been at the Burrow. Fred had tried to charm a belt into making the wearer an excellent dancer, but when he put it on, it caused him to leap up and down - vigorously - pulling his knees up to his chest with every leap - for twenty solid minutes, while George alternated between laughing himself silly and trying to grab hold of the belt to get it off. Fred's own arms were useless - they were stuck straight up in the air. George got kicked twice, and he'd accidentally punched Fred in the plums three times, and by the end - even though they'd never laughed harder in their lives - they'd both needed something for pain but didn't dare ask their Mum.)

George remembered these things, and of course it made him sad. But he realized that there was something other than sadness in him. Wistfulness? Fondness?

Was it joy? Was he still the same boy who laughed so hard he cried, that one time when he'd just accidentally punched his brother in the nutsack _again_? (And the look on his brother's face immediately afterward, as he jumped helplessly into the air _again_, howling in pain while laughing at himself?)

Could he think of that and not remember the _sensation_ of joy, at least? After the belt was finally off, the first coherent thing either one of them said was, "If we can agree that _that_ was good dancing, then we have a winner." George couldn't even remember which of them had said it, but he could remember how his stomach and cheeks ached so much that laughing again _hurt_.

He smiled as he finished the potion, and measured out a dose for Mrs. Stone. When he took it out to her, she frowned at him.

"Are you okay, George?"

"Yes, I'm fine," he said automatically, unsure why she was asking. But she looked at his cheeks, and he reached up to find they were damp.

He hadn't even realized he'd been crying.

* * *

><p><em>Distant Friends<em>

The next day he got a package from his mother. It was a single chocolate frog, with a note that said, "I love you Georgie. If you get a chance, write me back."

He didn't know the occasion. It wasn't Christmas or Easter or his birthday. He wrote her back: "I love you too, Mum. I'm doing okay."

About a week later, he got an owl from Ginny: "Mum wrote me and said she was looking at the clock and saw your hand went to 'Work' for a few minutes. She was so excited, George. You should write her. She's been worried about you."

He laughed to himself. "Work," indeed. It must have been while he was brewing the potion. His mum had sent the chocolate the very next day. He wrote to Ginny: "It's none of your business, little sis, but I already wrote Mum an absolute missive earlier this week. I was not aware of her spying activities at the time, though."

After he sent the letter, he reread Ginny's note. _Mum wrote to Ginny?_ He sent her a follow-up owl. "Where are you living? Why is Mum writing you? Is there a _boy_ I need to deliver a stern lecture to?"

Ginny didn't reply right away. He figured it was probably for the best. Knowing Ginny, she might send him a Howler.

Time hurried on, even as the days got longer. He wrote to Angelina with increasing regularity, letters of increasing length. He told her stories of life at the Muggle school, like the one time he spent an hour after lunch, digging through four bins full of discarded food, looking for a retainer belonging to a distraught nine-year-old girl. (He'd found it, in the last bin. It was only later that he remembered that he could have used a Summoning Charm.)

Angelina wrote back to him and told him about two bats who had taken up residence outside her bedroom window. She named them Umbridge and Snape.

He wrote back and told her that he'd been thinking about Snape, and told her about the potion he brewed. "It's the first time I've brewed. I missed brewing, it turns out. Maybe I'll make something new and send it to you."

He finally got a reply from Ginny, who was unimpressed with his brotherly posturing.

"It's none of your business, big brother, but as this is the first time you've pulled your head out of your arse long enough to notice the world around you, I guess I'll give in to your curiosity. Also, I suppose it is a matter of public record - not that I would ever accuse you of picking up the Prophet, let alone reading it.

"Anyway, I'm a reserve chaser for the Holyhead Harpies. I've been with them for the past year. I played a few games when Bentley hurt her shoulder, and I played for a whole month back in February when Hughes had her baby. I might be on the starting team next year."

The news staggered him. His little baby sister? Sure, she flew well enough, _for his little sister._ But professional Quidditch? That was … serious business. He sent off for a team poster of the Holyhead Harpies through owl order, and when he got it, sure enough, there was his baby sister, third row, second from the left. Waving at him like she'd been waiting for him to look at her.

He hung the poster on the wall of his bedroom and waved back at her. She smiled and kept waving.

Angelina wrote to him and said that she remembered some of George's potions, and while she would appreciate a gift from him, she hoped he'd understand if she didn't exactly trust him on principle. She said that things at the shop had settled down, and that Ron was helping out, now. "You'd never believe it, but he's actually really good."

George had a moment when he thought he didn't know anybody he thought he knew. Ginny was playing professional Quidditch; Ron was working in the joke shop - and was _good_.

He remembered his nameless and interchangeable flatmates. Was that how he thought of his own family? Like their lives didn't even matter to him? Like he didn't care enough to learn about the little details that made them who they were, the things that made them worth loving?

Was that how he treated Angelina?

He had been worried, years ago, that Angelina thought of _him_ like that. Like she thought that he could just substitute in for Fred, with little disruption to her life. But maybe he put himself in that position.

He wrote back to Angelina:

"Lina, I'm not sure if it's too late to say this, but I'm sorry for everything I did. I wasn't ready for a relationship, but I didn't know it at the time."

He stared at these words for a long time, and wanted to add something to it, but couldn't think of anything, so he signed it:

"Love, George."

It was the first time he'd signed a letter to her. It felt oddly formal and familiar at the same time. He suddenly thought to add a postscript:

"P.S. To be fair, you probably weren't ready for a relationship, either."

It was harsh, but correct. And it needed to be said. Mixing up the business and the relationship had been colossally stupid, and Angelina was a smart girl.

At the start of June, he again paid rent in pounds, and when he handed the money over, both he and Mrs. Stone stared at it in silence.

"I'll still work at the school over the summer," he told her. "There's a surprising amount of cleaning that can only be done when the little buggers are gone on holiday."

"Oh, George, how much longer are you going to hide?" She said it like she'd been holding it in a long time. As such, he was sure it made more sense to her than it did to him.

"Sorry?"

"Hide...hide. You have people who care for you - I see Pearl coming and going with letters, and other owls, too. And you still hide from whomever's writing you. No one ever visits you, and you only leave here to go to your silly little job. You work for Muggles and live with a lonely old woman."

"A lonely old woman who cooks dinner for me every night."

"A lonely old woman who is a stranger to you. You don't even know my first name!"

"Edna."

"Pff." She waved her hand dismissively. "Lucky guess. I don't know your last name."

"Weasley."

"And you have skills that are useful - I told Henry Jarvis about your potion, and he was impressed."

"Well, I always thought Henry Jarvis was a man of fine taste and good breeding."

"Don't be sarcastic, young man. Henry Jarvis is the apothecary. I told him you might be looking for a job. He said you could stop by to talk to him any time. He'd like to meet you."

He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Mrs. Stone, are you trying to get me a more respectable job than janitor at a primary school?"

"No, boy. I'm trying to guess what you did before, and why you don't do it anymore. What I know is this: something changed for you the night you brewed me that potion. You settled, somehow."

George thought about this. He had felt different that night. His mum's clock had said he was working, and it was true. It seemed like the first time he'd worked in ages; whatever it was he had done that night, it had worked.

He didn't feel like sharing this with Mrs. Stone, so he shrugged owned up to what she had already guessed. "Yes, I did brew potions. Before."

She nodded firmly. "Well, if you ever want to brew potions again, go see Henry. He's in the brownstone building with the yellow door at the end of the lane."

And then Pearl interrupted them, bringing another letter from Angelina. George took it to his room to read it; he didn't need Mrs. Stone as an audience.

The letter read:

"George, you arse,

"Of course neither one of us was ready for a relationship, but it was worth a try (I guess). And I would never presume to gauge your current emotional state, but as you are still hiding from everyone you've ever known and loved, I'd say the probability that you are ready relationship at this time is low.

"As for me, I'm still … confused, I guess.

"I couldn't help but notice that you didn't comment on what I told you about Ron. He's really good - when he follows your notes he can make the merchandise almost as well as you could, and he's even tweaked a few things - he came up with a new Daydream Charm that's selling really well. But he is absolute crap at inventing new things. He's worse than I am, George - he had this idea for a fork that changed into a spoon. I'm serious - he laughed about it for days - he said it was based on a Muggle thing Hermione told him about called a spork - don't ask. He made a few prototypes and kept them on the check-out counter so that he could explain them to customers - who all just smiled politely at him.

"I'll be honest - the shop needs your creative spark.

"Angelina"

George read the letter several times, and still wasn't sure what to make of it. In the end, he decided that it meant three things: One, he needed to get to know Ron better. (The fork/spoon thing seemed in character for his bumbling little brother, but a successful Daydream Charm? Those were tricky little devils). Two, Angelina was still mad at him, a little bit. (He'd earned that, though, and he might still be a little angry with himself.) Three, Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes needed him.

This last bit made him … uncomfortable? Happy? Unsure. He was starting to think that he needed Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, too. But if he failed the shop again, he didn't think he could survive it. Better to avoid the shop forever than return to it and fuck it up again.

Inexplicably, his thoughts drifted to his mum's clock. He thought of the relative merits of Traveling and Work. Traveling was temporary - itinerant - purgatory. Work was hard, but nothing worked without it. And while it did hold a certain appeal - like an anchor for a drifting ship - it also held a bit of terror - like shackles on a slave.

And then George remembered something Ginny had told him: before he ran away - before he started Traveling - he wasn't at Work.

He'd been Lost.

* * *

><p><em>The Apothecary<em>

The last day of school for the children at the primary school was a Friday, and the school closed at noon. He was to return on Monday to start the long process of waxing the floors of the classrooms. He wasn't looking forward to it; the school seemed abandoned and lonely without the children inside it.

George didn't know what to do with his free afternoon. He didn't want to go back to Mrs. Stone's house, and since he didn't have anything better to do, he took a long walk. He found himself outside a brownstone building with a yellow door.

The apothecary's.

He didn't particularly want to meet Henry Jarvis, but he could just browse for potion ingredients, or maybe buy himself a nice set of scales.

And if he were honest with himself, working for an apothecary sounded like a better way to spend his time and earn his money than by waxing classroom floors in an empty school.

Maybe a small part of him did want to meet Henry Jarvis.

As George walked through the yellow door, a bell tinkled overhead. He was immediately impressed with the store's neatness and selection. The village was not huge, and the magical population living in it even smaller, but the apothecary was impressively well-stocked for that. There were several shelves full of different dried leaves and berries, all neatly organized and hand-labeled. Another two shelves contained rows of glass jars, each full of a different colored powder. The back wall had a nice selection of cauldrons, and scales in three different sizes. Behind the counter, along the side wall, was a small assortment of pre-brewed potions.

As George took it all in, a middle aged man with glasses and sandy-blond hair walked out to greet him.

"Can I help you find something, sir?"

George hedged. "I just wanted to look at your scales," he said, and started to walk toward the back wall.

"You're a wizard," the man said, looking at George's clothes curiously. George looked down and saw he was still wearing his janitor's uniform from the school.

"Oh, yes. I'm just working for the Muggles." He shrugged.

"Ah, you must be Edna's boarder … George, isn't it?"

George groaned. "I see my reputation precedes me. Yes, that's me."

"Yes, Edna does tend to talk. She's told me all about how you're wasting your time by working at the primary school, and that you regularly correspond with at least three different people, none of whom Edna's ever clapped eyes on, and that you brewed a pain-relief potion of your own invention that Edna swears worked better than anything she's ever bought from me."

George scowled. "_Edna_ exaggerates on all counts. All she told me about you is that your name is Henry Jarvis, and that you're practically falling over yourself trying to hire me on somehow."

The man smiled. "Well, I am Henry Jarvis, but the rest might be a bit of an embellishment."

"No doubt."

"So, George. Tell me why you're not at the school right now."

"Today was the last day of school, so we had a half-day."

"Of course - I didn't think that the Muggle schools must be on the same schedule as Hogwarts. My daughter Cassady is just finishing her second year. She'll be home for the summer holiday tomorrow."

"Oh." George waited a polite beat, then started again toward the back of the store to get a closer look at the scales.

Henry Jarvis followed him. "So, are you interested in brewing?"

George shrugged. "I was, at one time. I've been thinking about getting back into it."

"Because Edna got one thing right - I do need help brewing potions. You can tell, my stocks are low." He gestured to the shelves behind the counter, which were quite bare.

"What kind of potions do you need brewed?"

"Honestly, Wolfsbane." He sighed deeply. "It's such a nit-picky potion. And it takes a long time to brew, and if I try to brew anything else while I'm making it, I ruin both potions and have to start over. And, you know, after the last war, demand for Wolfsbane skyrocketed, so I can't afford to not have it in stock."

"Of course." Three years ago, George would have never guessed that the biggest impact of the terrifying increase in werewolf attacks would be felt by small-town apothecaries, but here they all were. The reign of terror had apparently been replaced by mundane practicality.

But he'd never brewed Wolfsbane before, and told Mr. Jarvis so.

Mr. Jarvis didn't seem bothered by this. "Anyone with an Acceptable on their N.E.W.T. could brew it. I assume you qualify?"

"Actually, I never sat for my N.E.W.T."

This did bother the apothecary. "Never sat your N.E.W.T.? Why ever not?"

"Our seventh year at Hogwarts was when Dolores Umbridge took over as headmistress. We didn't exactly see eye-to-eye, and one thing led to another, and I … may have left school a bit early. I did make an Outstanding on my O.W.L., though."

"Hm. Well, I suppose I could ask the Potions Master at Hogwarts about you -"

"I'm afraid that won't work so well. I studied under Professor Snape."

"Oh, yes, of course. Sad business, that."

"Mm."

"I suppose I should ask - do you _want_ to work for me?"

The question was straightforward, but George had a hard time answering. He certainly did not walk into the apothecary's shop this afternoon with that intention. But now he wanted to prove that he could do it.

"Yes," he said finally, and to his great embarrassment, he went red.

Mr. Jarvis didn't notice. "Well, George, I can't afford to let you try to brew a batch of Wolfsbane on your own. I've already ruined one batch this month, and the ingredients are expensive. So how are you going to prove to me that you're up to the task?"

"Why can't I brew your other potions while you brew Wolfsbane?"

"Ah, because I hate brewing Wolfsbane. I enjoy the other potions. I don't want to hire someone to take over the fun part of my job."

"Fair enough."

Mr. Jarvis bit the inside of his cheek and looked at George for a long moment. "I'll tell you what," he said. "Wolfsbane tastes foul, and those who have to take it have better-than-average senses of taste and smell. Why don't you whip up a potion that makes Wolfsbane taste better?"

George immediately recognized that this was a test, and saw his opening. "Oh, you want to see if I know Kronecker's Rule - or Kronecker's Badly Informed Guideline." Jarvis looked pleased, but George continued, "I'm familiar with the theory, but I also happen to know a potion that breaks Kronecker's Rule. It only takes fifteen minutes to brew, if I can use your potion kit."

Jarvis was skeptical, but George brewed the peppermint potion in short order. The apothecary couldn't believe when George asked for pepper. "Black pepper?" Jarvis asked.

"Yes, ordinary ground black pepper."

"It's … in the kitchen," Jarvis said, and looked very confused when George added a large quantity of his ordinary kitchen pepper to the cauldron. The resulting potion was perfectly clear and odorless. George poured out two vials and handed one over to Jarvis with a grin.

"Bottoms up," George said, and drank his portion.

Jarvis drank his, and frowned. "This tastes like … nothing."

"Ah, but now taste anything else."

And Mr. Jarvis earned quite a bit of respect from George by picking up a lacewing fly from the counter and popping it in his mouth.

"Peppermint?" he said, delighted.

George agreed. "Peppermint." And he ate a lacewing fly of his own.

"Well, George, or I should say Mr. -"

"Weasley. George Weasley."

Mr. Jarvis stared. "You're never a Weasley like Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes?"

George was so stunned that he didn't know what to say for a few moments. "Yes, that shop is in my family," he managed.

"Only my Cassie has loved that shop ever since it opened! It seems like every weekend, she begs me or the Missus to take her to Diagon Alley to buy something from there!"

But George must have looked uncomfortable, so Mr. Jarvis dropped the subject. "As I was saying, Mr. George Weasley, you are welcome to attempt to brew Wolfsbane for me. I'll get you the published version of the recipe, as well as my own brewing notes, for whatever they're worth. Unfortunately, for this month at least, you'll have to buy the ingredients for it. If you brew the potion successfully, I'll reimburse you for the expense, of course, and split any profits with you, fifty-fifty."

George didn't miss a beat. "It sounds like I'll be doing all the work. I should get all the profits."

Jarvis grinned. "Not unless you try to peddle the Wolfsbane yourself - which would be impossible as you're unlicensed. But you have a point. Sixty-forty."

They settled on eighty-twenty, and Jarvis handed over the recipe and his brewing notes as promised. As George read over the instructions that night, he realized that in order to brew the potion successfully, he'd have to quit his job at the Muggle school. And he smiled.


	4. Home

_George, Again_

Brewing Wolfsbane was incredibly tedious and George hated every moment of it. The potion's initial base needed to be tended constantly for three hours. Mr. Jarvis's notes for this stage of brewing advised him to "go to bathroom first." And then the potion had to sit, perfectly undisturbed but uncovered, for fourteen hours - here Mr. Jarvis's notes warned to "ward against flies" - and then there was a five-minute window during which three drops of unicorn saliva had to be added. Then it had to be stirred - not using a circular motion, but with a single stroke from east to west - once every quarter hour for six hours. And then there was another flurry of activity that lasted an hour, then four hours of rest, then another extended period of tedious stirring, and another, and another, and so on - and if all went well, at the end of six days, you'd have fifteen doses of Wolfsbane. An adult werewolf required eight doses of Wolfsbane per month.

The fact that one batch of Wolfsbane wasn't _quite_ enough for two adult werewolves was just an extra kick in the teeth. The potion couldn't be scaled up - too many of the ingredients were volatile in quantity - and even George couldn't figure out a way to time a second batch to brew concurrently with the first.

George remembered finding out that Professor Lupin was a werewolf, and that Snape had brewed Wolfsbane for him all year. As George added nineteen drops of adder venom to the potion, one at a time, with feverish stirring between every drop, a puzzle piece fell into place for him. _This_ was why Snape had hated Lupin so much. George had no idea how Snape had managed to teach classes that year.

He would dearly love to see his old professor's brewing notes on the potion.

On paper, the profit margin on the Wolfsbane Potion was high, but all things considered, George had made more money as a janitor. The work had been easier, too.

George had successfully made three batches of the potion, and while his fourth batch was in its initial resting phase, he considered ways of tweaking the formula.

The problem was that the potion was such a delicate balance. It was designed to tame the wolf, but not kill the human. These two goals were absolutely in conflict with each other, which explained why most of the potion's ingredients countered the effects of other ingredients, which were only in the potion to counter the effects of still other ingredients.

The more George thought about it, the more insane it seemed. Who had come up with this recipe? Xeno Lovegood? The potion was like using a hammer to remove a hangnail. With enough care, such a thing would be possible, he supposed, but why attempt it?

Wolfsbane worked entirely _against_ the wolf, when it would be so much easier to work _for_ the wolf. For example, he could make a simple potion that worked on wolves, but had no effect on humans. A sleeping draught, for example.

George jotted down a few hasty notes on scraps of paper he found lying around. He read over what he wrote, scratching out some lines and adding others. Finally happy with his outline, he went outside on an excursion to find dogwood blossoms. When he got back to his room, he realized that he'd missed adding the unicorn drool to the Wolfsbane. He quickly Vanished the ruined potion and cleaned the cauldron thoroughly.

He had a different potion to brew.

By that night, he'd finished a prototype of his canine sleeping potion, and tried a dose. He was pleased to find that it didn't seem to make him drowsy, but he did sleep well that night. When he woke up the next day, he realized he'd made a mistake. The sleeping potion wasn't supposed to work on him; taking it _immediately before he went to bed_ was not the most rigorous test he could have devised. He drank another dose in the morning, and didn't notice any effects.

Now he needed to try the potion on a dog. He found a stray and tempted it into his room with a carrot. When he gave the potion to the dog, it fell over immediately - startling George a bit - but the dog breathed normally and twitched its tail a few times, so all seemed well.

Twenty-four hours later, the dog woke up, yawned, and walked over to the door. It looked back at George expectantly. George grinned and let the dog out. The trial was a success.

George bottled the rest of the potion and took it to the apothecary. As the bell tinkled to announce George's arrival, Jarvis looked up from the counter where he stood.

"George!" he said. "You're either behind on the Wolfsbane or you've cocked it up already."

"I cocked it up intentionally. I made something else that might interest you, but it needs to be tested on a werewolf."

"Oh?"

George affected nonchalance. "It's just a sleeping potion."

"And?"

He shrugged. "It's species-specific for canines."

Jarvis raised his eyebrows.

"Oh, and it's time-release, so it works for exactly twenty-four hours."

Jarvis stood absolutely still. "Have you tried it?"

"Well, yes, but it didn't do anything to me, now did it? I gave it to a stray mutt yesterday, who slept peacefully in my room until this afternoon."

"Well," Jarvis said. He didn't seem capable of further speech. "Well," he tried again.

George helped him. "The full moon is the end of next week. Can we do trials? How does this work?"

Jarvis cleared his throat. "That rather depends on your intentions. Are you just saving yourself from brewing Wolfsbane? Because then we can do the trials and sell this locally. But if you want to save a lot of witches and wizards from taking an extremely dangerous and expensive potion -"

"That second one, I think."

"- then the potion will have to be approved by the Ministry."

"How do we go about that?"

"I … I'll make some inquiries." Jarvis stared at him blankly. "George," he finally said. "Does this potion really work?"

"I think so."

"This is … big."

* * *

><p><em>Ron, Again<em>

George didn't know how Jarvis managed it, but the ministry did a full-scale trial on the very next full moon. It was a complete success. Jarvis had been sent the trial notes and shared them with George.

"Some ministry witch sat right there in the room with all those werewolves!" Jarvis told him. "She had to make sure they really slept all night! They were chained up, just in case, of course - but she stayed - in there! - all night! - until they changed back into humans and woke up! Can you imagine?"

George couldn't, actually. But the care put into the trial surprised him - the werewolves had been male and female, all ages. They had been given the potion at different times, starting at 10:00 in the morning before the full moon, and going right up until fifteen minutes before moonrise. All werewolves fell asleep immediately upon their transformations, and woke up when they resumed human form as the moon set.

In short, the potion worked perfectly. And George was more than happy to abandon brewing Wolfsbane.

Jarvis insisted that the new potion needed a good name. George suggested "Wolfsnap."

Jarvis grimaced. "Wolf snap?" he asked.

"No! No no. Wolf's. Nap. Wolfsnap."

"Oh, that's terrible. What about 'Wolfsleep'?"

"Wolf's leap?" George asked.

They both laughed. And then Mr. Jarvis's daughter Cassie piped up. "What about Dreamwolf Potion?"

"Dreamwolf Potion!" George gave Cassie a high five.

In two days, George had brewed enough Dreamwolf Potion to supply all the werewolves within a ten-mile radius. Each bottle that Jarvis sold came with a stern warning that the potion was still quite new, and werewolves should take necessary precautions until they were sure how it would affect them. "It's just a precaution," Jarvis told George. "This potion works - a 100% success rate in trials is unheard of. But just in case there's one werewolf out there with a really bad case of insomnia … "

George wasn't worried. The Dreamwolf Potion was far simpler than any one of the Skiving Snackboxes, and no one had ever complained that those didn't work as advertised.

George had enough free time to start thinking up different potions, experimenting like he hadn't done in years. He was currently puzzling out different color-change potions - one gulp and the entire body would change to one solid color. He'd managed a bright red and a yellow, and the effects were startling. The only body parts unaffected by the color change were the pupils (which remained black - but the whole rest of the eye changed color, to great effect) and the teeth. When George went down to dinner, yellow from his toenails to the ends of his hair, Mrs. Stone had laughed and laughed at him, and then asked to try it. She took a sip of yellow and a sip of red, and surprised George by turning bright pink.

"Oooo, this makes me look younger, don't you think?" she said.

George laughed.

He wanted to market the potions as a set - like a box of crayons, but for coloring people - but he was having a hard time managing a proper shade of blue. The closest he'd managed was a mild gray.

One day, while he was in his room putting the finishing touches on another attempt at blue, he heard Mrs. Stone speaking with a man in the kitchen. As Mrs. Stone didn't often have visitors, he felt oddly protective and ventured out to make sure everything was okay.

George was surprised to find Ron, artless as ever, standing in Mrs. Stone's kitchen, holding a cup of tea.

Mrs. Stone greeted George. "There you are! I thought you might not be in. I've just been chatting with your brother, who is such a nice young man!"

"Oh, he's a charmer," George agreed. Ron scowled.

"Well, I'm sure you two have a lot to catch up on, so I'll just do the polite thing and go listen at the door." And Mrs. Stone left the room.

George and Ron looked at each other.

"Ron."

"George."

"I heard that you're helping out at the shop."

Ron stuck out his chest a little bit. "I am."

"I heard that you have a talent for some aspects of the job."

"Well, I did make a new Daydream Charm."

"Which is impressive. Anything else?"

Ron shrank slightly. "Nothing as good as the Daydream Charm, but not everything's a winner."

"True, that. Why are you here?"

Ron set his tea aside. "I wanted to see you."

"Why now?"

"Hermione …"

Ron trailed off, and George could only think of one place that sentence was going: _Hermione's pregnant_.

He prodded Ron. "I've met her. We're related by marriage, I believe?"

"Shut it, George. It's hard to know where to start."

But that sounded ominous, and George was suddenly worried - what if something bad had happened to Hermione? He mumbled a quick apology.

But Ron shook his head and his next words were completely unexpected. "Hermione said that you'd invented a potion - a really useful potion for helping werewolves. I … I just wanted to see you, and make sure it was real."

George was surprised, but recovered quickly. "How does that witch always manage to know everything? That potion is barely three weeks old!"

"She works for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. She sees all sorts of experimental stuff come across her desk, but when she saw a formula for a new potion for werewolves, invented by George Weasley, she grabbed on with both hands." Ron paused, but George stayed quiet.

Ron continued, "So, anyway, she convinced her boss that the potion had huge potential, and she set up the trial - even volunteered to stay with the werewolves overnight for 'experimental purposes.'"

"That was _Hermione_? I heard that a ministry witch did that, but I didn't know … _Hermione_."

"I know. I was more worried than she was. She told me that if you invented it, it was bound to work."

"Well." George didn't know what to say. Now that he knew her role, he could see her meticulous nature behind the trial's careful logic. "That's ..." he tried. She'd really stuck her neck out, because of _him_. "Thank her for me," he finally said.

"Are you kidding? She insisted that I come and thank _you_ - she says you've made a 'major breakthrough for the betterment of werewolves.' If you could just make a potion for freeing house-elves, she'd divorce me and marry you."

George snorted. "How have you been, Ron?"

"Fine. Fine."

"Why are you working in my joke shop?"

Ron shifted uncomfortably. "Well, Angelina needed help. You weren't around, so..."

"No, that's - " George stopped himself and sighed. "What I meant was, the last time I heard, you wanted to be a big, bad Auror."

Ron turned red. "Oh. Well, those were the dreams of a kid, I guess. I mean, I tried it. I applied for the program with Harry and everything. But it wasn't for me. I washed out."

George shrugged. "Happens to the best of us. And how is your lovely bride? No kids yet?"

Ron smiled - a genuine, broad smile. "Hermione's grand. She loves her job, and feels like she's able to make a difference. Really, she was so happy about that potion, George. She keeps saying how 'the expense of Wolfsbane left many werewolves near financial ruin.' And we don't have kids, yet. She wants to hold off a few years - she wants to 'establish her place in the Ministry,' or whatever. But we have time. We're only twenty."

"And here I was, sure you were here to announce a pregnancy. Still, I'm surprised Mum isn't hitting you up for grandkids."

"Oh, I guess you don't know - Bill and Fleur are expecting their first! We're going to be uncles!"

George didn't know what to say to that. So he said, "Wait here," and went back to his room to grab his most recent attempt at a blue color-change potion. He brought it back to the kitchen and poured out two doses. "Something new," he explained. He and Ron toasted and they both drank.

The thing about Ron was that he never learned. Ron drank the potion _at the same time_ as George - didn't even wait to make sure George wasn't faking him out. George marveled at this, even as he watched Ron turn an ugly shade of greenish-beige. He looked down at his own beige arms and sighed.

"It still needs work," he explained.

Ron laughed.

* * *

><p><em>Angelina, Again<em>

It took George two days and seven more recipes to get a perfect blue. The secret was carrot tops, oddly. George tried them on a hunch, because carrot tops were used to being on the opposite side of orange.

Using the blue, yellow, and red as bases, he could mix up all sorts of other colors, but not always in the expected way. Mrs. Stone had already shown that yellow and red made pink, and he found that yellow and blue made lavender. One drop of blue plus two of red made lime green, and one drop of each made a kelly green.

He bottled these seven colors carefully - making sure to label them as they were all clear in their potion form - and lined them up on his windowsill. He couldn't help smiling like an idiot. On a lark, he grabbed the bottle of the blue color-change potion, removed the label, and packaged it up to send to Angelina. He enclosed a note: "I believe I promised you a potion. Let me know how this works for you."

Angelina replied the next morning: "A very pleasing shade of royal blue." George guffawed at the breakfast table, and Mrs. Stone laughed at him.

"Anything you want to share?" she asked.

"Just trying my potions on different people." George put Angelina's note away. "I think I'll be going out today. I'll be back in time for dinner."

He didn't know what came over him, but he needed to see Angelina. He couldn't believe she'd trusted him enough to try his potion. He wondered what she looked like in blue. He had to see her; he had to show her the rest of the colors. He had to see what she looked like in lavender.

He had to see her.

He boxed up the other potions (he'd replaced the missing blue so that he had a full set) and Apparated to Diagon Alley.

The thing about Apparition was that it didn't give a wizard a whole lot of time to second-guess his motives. But when George saw the storefront of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, he nearly lost his nerve all the same.

He hadn't laid eyes on the shop for a year and a half, and it had been a long, ugly year and a half. And he hadn't left on the best of terms.

But he understood a lot more now. He knew that in that shop, he would neither find Fred nor escape him. He also knew that Angelina never expected to find Fred there, but had once hoped to find George. Returning here meant he had to admit to his own past tragedies and mistakes.

But it also meant returning home.

George hurriedly wiped some unexpected tears and adjusted his grip on the box. He walked into the shop.

Angelina greeted him with an automatic smile, then froze completely. George himself didn't make it much past the doorway.

"Hey," she finally said, with a slight squeak.

He blinked. "You tried my potion," he said stupidly.

"Oh," she said. "I didn't. I gave it to Ron." Her voice was still a little high-pitched.

"Oh," he said. "He'll try anything."

"Yeah."

"I have other colors." He held up the box, and felt very silly.

She cleared her throat. "Let's see."

But she didn't move. George managed to get his legs working again, and walked over to her. He stopped just in front of her, but didn't hand over the box. Nor did she reach for it.

They just looked at each other.

Her hair was different - it was very short and curly, almost against her skull. Angelina had always been pretty, but with the short hair she was a knockout. Her eyes looked bigger; her cheekbones more pronounced.

"You cut your hair," he said. "I like it."

"Oh." She laughed a little self-consciously. "I was sick of the weave."

"The what?"

"The weave." Off his blank look, she repeated, "The weave?" She gestured vaguely around her head.

"That - wasn't your hair?" Now that he thought about it, her hair always was a little too perfect.

She frowned. "You mean, we slept together for the better part of a year and you didn't know I had a _weave_?"

George spluttered. "Well, I - didn't - my _twin_ had just _died_!"

Angelina rolled her eyes. "Playing that card a little early, don't you think? We still haven't addressed your behavior."

They both got quiet. Angelina said, "Sorry. Maybe it's too soon."

"No, no, it's good. It's just a little..."

"Soon."

"Maybe," he agreed. "I don't even know what I'm doing here."

"Trying potions?"

George looked down at the box in his hands. "Yeah. I like lime green the best. But I think you should try lavender." He showed her the bottles of clear potions and gave her the one labeled "lavender." He picked the lime green for himself.

As they raised their respective bottles in a toast, Angelina said, "I can't believe you didn't know about the weave."

George set his potion down in mock-seriousness. "You're going to have to drop it."

"But - a _weave_."

George felt himself turning red in advance of the color-change potion. "Look - you're the only woman I've ever … whose hair I've ever looked at so closely. I just thought it was natural, okay?"

"What part? The seams?"

They laughed uproariously. After George collected himself, he said, "I'm man enough to admit that women's hair baffles me."

"Noted and agreed."

They raised their potions again. Their eyes met, both of them clearly struggling for an appropriate toast.

"Well, cheers," George said.

"Cheers," she agreed, and drank.

Angelina looked stunning in lavender. George stared at her - the shape of her lips, the curve of her neck - and she stared back at him with a slight smile on her lavender face.

"I can see why you like the lime green," she said. "It suits you."

"Lina?"

"Yeah?"

"I might be ready to come back … but I might not be."

"I think you're ready to try. But … I think _we_ should wait."

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

"I do love you."

"I love you too."

And they hugged, lime green wrapped up in lavender.


End file.
